Photoshop is famous (not famous?) for being able to make photos look better than they really are. It's no wonder-its suite of tools can do everything from adding a little extra to completely overhauling an image. We'll show you some ways to make your photos or digital scans even better with some small techniques that have great results.
Step
Method 1 of 2: Cropping and Healing
Step 1. Open a photo
When opened in Photoshop, the photo will appear as a layer named Background. The first thing to do before applying the finishing touches is to crop the photo, and remove anything that is distracting from the image. For this tutorial, we'll start with this image:
You can download the full size version here
Step 2. Select the Crop tool (C)
Usually, our photos are taken without thinking too much about composition. Either because we just capture a moment, or take a lot of pictures in hopes of finding a good "one photo". Cropping can help you to focus an image on the subject and add a lot of power to the image.
Step 3. This image is cropped using the rule of thirds principle
The idea is that an image is divided into three parts, horizontally and vertically. Important elements of the image should be on or near the line.
- You can see the peaks of the mountains roughly parallel to the vertical lines, while the sky and trees are defined by the horizontal lines. You can feel that this cropping makes the image more interesting than if everything was centered.
- Press Enter to crop the image.
Step 4. Choose the Spot Healing Brush (J) tool
Use this tool to clean up a bit of the image that isn't cropped, but is distracting. For the image we're testing, we're going to cut the trees that are on the bottom left, bottom right, and top right.
Step 5. Your image is now ready for the next step:
make it awesome!
Method 2 of 2: Cleaning and Customizing
Step 1. Make a duplicate of the background layer
You can right-click the background layer, then select Duplicate Layer from the menu that appears, or drag the background layer onto the New Layer icon and Photoshop will create a duplicate layer automatically.
Step 2. Set the Blending Mode to Soft Light
This can make the image too dark, but it's only a transitional step. Once the blending mode is defined, choose Control-I (Command-I) to invert the image, or select Adjustments from the menu Image, then select Invert.
Step 3. Use the High Pass filter
From the menu Filter, choose Other… > High Pass… Make sure the Preview checkbox is enabled, then adjust the Radius slider to your liking. Watch your image change, with a nice, soft effect. The radius really depends on the resolution of your image. If the resolution is very high, you can use a larger radius than the low resolution image. The guide depends on your taste.
Besides being able to be used on landscape images, this effect is also very good for portrait images
Step 4. Create a Levels adjustment layer
With the Background copy layer selected, click the Levels icon in the Adjustment window.
Clicking the button Auto will automatically balance the level between the lightest and darkest parts of the image. You can use the sliders to adjust your image, or use one of the custom presets at the top of the Properties window.
Step 5. Create a Curves adjustment layer
Return to the Adjustments tab, and click the Curves icon (to the right, next to the Levels icon). This you can use to adjust the contrast of the image.
Click about 1/4 of the way from the top of the line and drag it down a bit. Click again about 3/4 of the way from the top of the line and drag it up a bit. This will form an "S"-shaped curve, and your image will definitely be more dramatic
Step 6. Change the blending mode of the Curves adjustment layer to Luminosity
This will prevent contrast from affecting the color information of the image.
Step 7. Merge the Layers
From the Layers window menu, select Merge Visible, or press Control-Alt-Shift-E (Shift-Option-Command-E on a Mac) to create a new layer that combines all the information into one layer.
Step 8. Select the Dodge tool (O)
The Dodge and Burn tool is suitable for highlighting and shadowing in a photo. At the top of the Photoshop window, set the following controls: for the Dodge tool, set the Exposure to 5%, and the Range to Highlights.
- Set your brush to a fairly small size (depending on the resolution of your image), and use the Dodge tool to increase the highlights. Giving details in a photo is a good thing, without over-brightening it.
- The Burn tool will darken things, and is good when used on shadows to give the image more depth.
Step 9. Compare the pictures
The top is the image after editing, the bottom is the image before editing.
